These Guys Are Trying to Design the Picnic of the Future

Picnics are one of those rare activities that have changed little over time. It’s still mostly checkered blankets and wicker baskets. Victor Nouman and Eugenio Fernandez have had enough of your boring, old-fashioned picnics, though, and they’re ready to move into the future. That’s why the Spanish designers created a prototype for an event they refer to as the technopicnic. And while that sounds like it could double as an event in Zac Efron’s recently failed EDM movie, for Nouman and Fernandez, it is about recognizing the effects of urbanization. As the odd, computerized voice in their equally odd technopicnic video explains, “Typically we define picnic as finding an exotic place to share a meal. But what happens when we bring these ideas to a context defined by hard pavement, congestion and new ways of communication.”

With that hard pavement and congestion in mind, Nouman and Fernandez, along with their firm Atelier TERATOMA, created a picnic basket/backpack reminiscent of a jetpack. It unfolds into its own table—because there’s no way you’re spreading your food out where a crowd of people is going to step on it—and also comes with a solar panel to power a set of speakers and charge smartphones (because no piece of picnicking equipment, furniture or clothing can be considered modern unless it charges your phone).

Currently, they have made only one pack, but Nouman and Fernandez are currently looking for partners to produce these on a larger scale. So if you know anyone looking to get into the futuristic urban picnic game, have them got ahold Atelier TERATOMA here.